After investing billions of dollars into researching the theft of its intellectual property, SCO produces the following source code in court:
}
According to The SCO Group's respectable CEO, Mr. Darl McBride, one million of the above lines were found in various source code files pertaining to Microsoft Windows XP, proving that the Linux community did, in fact, steal one million lines of valuable SCO intellectual property.
Mr. McBride had this to say about his discovery:
The United States Constitution explicitly forbids the stealing of Unixware code! Furthermore, as clearly stated in paragraph 921 of the First Amendment to said Constitution, the GPL is an unconstitutional license! Copyright law explicitly forbids free operating systems! Linux hackers, axe in hand, spend all their time physically hacking apart mainframe systems belonging to SCO and its partners! They smashed up my own mainframe in my own house! Microsoft's Windows XP is based on technologies developed by me, Darl McBride, five hundred years ago! These technologies are our valuable intellectual property! This is a government conspiracy, I tell you! You're all going to die! Armageddon is coming!!! You...
(Darl could not finish commenting because the orderlies carried him back to his padded room at this point.)
Wyatt: I'm getting tired of your gas, now jerk that pistol and go to work.[whack] I said throw down, boy! [whack] You gonna do something, or just stand there and bleed?
Darl:
Wyatt: I said throw down boy!
Except in this case, Wyatt means, "Throw down some code, muthufscku!"
Darl does NOT deserve ANY respect.
on
SCOrched Earth
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It appears that instead of developing software, they have changed their mission statement to, "Litigate everybody out of business."
This is what worries me about SCO: That their army of lawyers will wreak terrible legal havoc, not because SCO was right, or because SCO suffered damages--I strongly believe that neither of these is the case. Their army of lawyers will pull off Bill Gates style, "I don't understand your question," when the question is, "Does X concern you?" They'll pull off Bill Clinton style, "That depends on what 'is' means." They'll find loopholes and language in the law that nobody ever thought was there, with newly made-up implications that no legislator intended or thought would occur, to cause as much damage as possible to the Linux community and the free software community in general.
The longer I think about this, the more apparent it becomes to me that they do not want to profit from litigation. It's like the old story of people who are seated at both sides of a long table covered with the most wonderful foods in the world. The only problem is that the silverware is a yard long, and nobody's arm is long enough to fit their spoon or fork into their mouth. So somebody comes up with the idea that everyone should feed the person seated across from him. That way, everybody gets to eat. But Darl says, "What?! I will feed somebody else?! NO WAY! Sure, it means I won't eat but he won't eat either!!" That, I strongly believe, is the nature of Darl McBride, and the new SCO.
They do not want to profit. They do not want to rectify damages (which I strongly believe never occurred). They do not want to protect their copyrights (which I strongly believe were never violated). They are focused on one solitary goal, and that is to destroy (or damage, to the greatest extent possible) Linux.
Darl gets his ass kicked.
on
SCOrched Earth
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Darl McBride: The Most Dangerous Man in the Technology Industry(1). There was an article in the Nov. 24, 2003 issue of InformationWeek.
Here is my favorite quote from that article:
But McBride, a self-described cowboy, isn't about to back down. He once had his administrative assistant return the call of someone who challenged McBride to a fight--to get a time and place. "We have developed thick skin," he says.
My comments on that quote: I'd be willing to bet that whoever challenged Darl to a fight would have actually done it, but Darl, upon finding out that he was about to get his ass kicked, chickened out.
What do you think?
(1) These were some of the words off the magazine's cover. The entire title is: "Is SCO Group's Darl McBride THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN in the technology industry? With a lawsuit imminent, Linux users are about to find out.
--
Reference: "You May Be Next" by John Foley, InformationWeek, Nov 24. 2003, pp 20-22.
I have many old(er) computers around here. My fastest is a Pentium III laptop, and my slowest is an old Pentium 133 box. Basically, whenever I got to the point where I needed an upgrade, I just got more RAM. Cutting down on swapping has brought me significantly greater performance improvements than having a "faster" processor.
Further, I am sick and tired of the market hype that surrounds clock speeds. It's not the processor, but the software that needs to be made more efficient. And because many programs spend a lot of time processing graphics and GUI stuff, I think that making video boards "smarter" by adding GUI-specific processing features would bring a significantly greater performance improvement, by offloading crap from the main processor, than speeding up the main processor.
All of that said, it doesn't surprise me that an old processor is "faster" than a newer one. There are hundreds of variables affecting their respective performances, the biggest one being the software used to test them. In most cases, I think it's like comparing apples to oranges.
Personal computers have gotten so fast and powerful in the past couple of years that I think what's under the hood is totally irrelevant to 90% of the users. The other 10% have specific needs because of high-end applications or something.
In other news, The Litigation Consortium was formed today. The industry group is composed of Microsoft, The SCO Group, the RIAA, and the MPAA. The mission statement of the new organization is:
1. Make False Claims 2. Litigate. 3. Profit!!!
SCO CEO Darl McBride will head the organization, bringing with him years of experience in..... oh, never mind.
AOL's next plan...
on
AOL's $299 PC
·
· Score: 4, Funny
The next thing you know, instead of receiving those annoying coasters in the mail all the time, you'll start receiving free computers in the mail all the time. They'll work for 1045 hours for free, after which you either pay, or they blow up.
AOL's "1. Mail computers 2. ??? 3. Profit!!!" plan is as follows:
Savvy computer users will figure out that erasing the hard drive and installing their own OS removes the 1045 hour time limit, and removing the TNT from inside the computer case completely eliminates the possibility of the computer blowing up.
Then, in an RIAA-like effort, AOL will sue hundreds of thousands of individuals for illegally using their computers, which constitute valuable intellectual property. They will ignore the fact that by law, when they send something in the mail, it becomes the property of the recipient. It will take a long time for this to get to the courts, in order for the courts to throw it out, and in the meantime, many frightened teenagers will settle with AOL for amounts greatly exceeding the market value of the computers.
Also, if conspiracy is proven, SCO, and its board, will face criminal, as well as civil penalties.
This is what I hope happens. They deserve to face all the criminal and civil penalties in the world, because what they have done is criminal. It would be really good, also, as it would restore faith in free software, especially Linux itself, and take faith away from any other vultures like SCO who think they can try something like this. I will be extremely happy if Darl McBride is shown on the evening news in handcuffs, being escorted to a police car, followed by a commercial for SuSE Linux or KDE or vi or something.
In other news, George Orwell's novel 1984 was banned because its contents were not politically correct. Orwell's use of the name Big Brother is not gender neutral and offends some obese people. Orwell's book is being recalled, and a court order has been issued to George Orwell to change the name to Thin Bisexual Sister.
I have a better idea: The "master" jumper should be white. The "slave" jumper should be black. Then they'll really get upset. Because, as we all know, the ONLY time in the history of the world that any group of people was enslaved was in the United States, less than 200 years ago.
Hard drive manufacturers shouldn't be so NIGGARDLY in supplying jumpers, and should incur the expense of shipping color-coded jumpers.
This is clearly ridiculous. The county of Los Angeles expects an entire industry to change accepted and known terminology because 1 person (ONE!) thought something was offensive.
I think several things need to happen here:
First, I encourage anyone and everyone to write to all the hard disk manufacturers you can think of, and strongly discourage them from changing this naming convention. Politely explain that the entire world should not change because of one person's lack of familiarity with the master/slave relationship of hard drives. (This terminology is actually used in other fields besides hard drives, to denote any mechanism or device in which this relationship of control is found.)
Second, if you've gone as far as doing that, you should consider writing to the county of Los Angeles to let them know how ridiculous and silly their request is.
I do not usually interfere in things like this, or ask anybody to do so, but I strongly believe that this is a frightening trend that is growing in too many areas. For example, a book called "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn" by Diane Ravitch gives example after example of things that school textbooks cannot say because they are politically incorrect. If you read this book, you'll eventually ask yourself, "Well, what exactly can you talk about?" That's the problem. If the entire world needs to change each time one person (or a small group of people) is offended by some terminology, then we will eventually live in George Orwell's nightmare.
As other Slashcrackers have noted, soon you won't be able to call a connector male or female, because somebody with an as-yet unknown gender (like an alleged child molester named MICHAEL JACKSON, though it's unlikely you've heard of him) will be offended at that.
- People should make choices and be responsible for those choices
- And pigs should really fly.
Perhaps, then, you suggest that people should not make choices, and furthermore that they should not be responsible for their own actions. And I suppose that the government should pay for it?
Sounds like a plan. But do it somewhere else, not in my country.
Doublespeak. That's what this document is. To quote George Orwell:
Here is a well-known verse from
Ecclesiastes:
"I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, not yet riches to men of understanding, not yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."
Here it is in modern English:
"Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."
All you need to do is add, "By leveraging innovative Microsoft technologies, content providers streamline compelling enterprise solutions," and you have something very similar to this security whitepaper.
To make a long story short, this document is an "Emperor's New Clothes"-style piece of PHB-speak/business-speak/market-speak/PR-speak that nobody really understands, but every business IT strategist that reads it will pretend that its meaning is very profound, like the emperor pretends to see his nonexistant clothes, to avoid appearing stupid to colleagues.
This is good news. Just as there is a conservative backlash against liberals around the country, and just as there is a religious backlash against the anti-God movement (the removal of the Ten Commandments from public places), there is a backlash against the anti-freedom movement by software and media companies. And this is definitely a good thing, which should continue.
People should make choices and be responsible for those choices. Computers should NOT make choices in peoples' places.
Wal-Mart is the Microsoft of stores. Wal-Mart is crushing American companies. They demand lower prices, forcing American companies to outsource overseas, causing losses of American jobs. If they cannot or will not cut the prices to levels that require slave labor, Wal-Mart goes to overseas companies. The result? Americans who shop at Wal-Mart are shopping themselves out of a job.
Hmmm... That sounds like a really good deal. But I think I got a better one: How about a special webserver with an artificial intelligence engine and a database containing a description of every bug in every program ever made. All you have to do when you have a problem, no matter what that problem is, is write an email that goes along the lines of, "I installed a program and it didn't work," and the server looks in its database, figures out some AI stuff, and sends a reply that tells *exactly* where the problem is, with a detailed procedure down to the keystroke that explains how to fix it on the user's particular system and software configuration. No information is needed other than, "I installed a program and it didn't work." Heck, it'll even figure out which program you're talking about.
You could also write emails to it about your girlfriend problems (by writing something like, "my girlfriend is mad at me"), and it'll send back a list, compiled for your particular situation, of things to say and do, down to the finest detail, designed to appeal to all levels of the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind of the female in question.
How does it work? All matter and energy in the universe comes in the form of waves at various frequencies and whatnot. The vibration of these waves is actually what produces everything we know. Even the fabric of space is part of this cosmic symphony. Every vibration has an effect on everything around it. So all they have to do is make up a piece of hardware, which I'll describe presently, and some drivers to support it under Linux. The hardware will include two sensors. In one, there's a single atom of hydrogen. Its vibrations are measured. The other is a gravitational sensor that senses where all the stars are in the universe. The information from these sensors goes into a simple mathematical formula that figures out exactly what is going on everywhere in the universe at any given moment in the past, present, or future. That information is then indexed like a lookup table to find the exact problem you're talking about in your email to the thing, and, knowing that this server will produce the correct answer, all it has to do is look into its own future to see whta that answer is. Essentially, the information comes from nowhere. Building the two sensors and the mathematical formula I described is elementary and left as an exercise for the reader.
You seem to forget one thing about the duel: Nobody forces you to accept a challenge to a duel if you are challenged. Note, also, that it is still illegal to use violence without the consent of the opposing party. For the purposes of freedom, however, it should be allowed for two consenting people to engage in a duel if that will help them to reconcile their differences of opinion on some matter.
This is additional proof that Microsoft will NEVER fix its bugs. The main reason for this is that Microsoft simply cannot do it. By attempting to take over every single area of the software industry, they have bitten off way more than they can chew. They simply have too many products that do too many things, and there are not enough programmers to handle the task of making that stuff work correctly, much less to make sure it is secure.
On the other hand, free software and/or open source software can be and is maintained by people all around the world. When there is an important problem, it is fixed very quickly. Most important of all from a security perspective, everybody can examine the inner workings of the software they use to make sure it meets their security standard.
What does this mean for Microsoft? Simply that they will continue to lose more and more installations around the world, while Linux, BSD, other OSs, and all the free and commercial software surrounding them take over.
Microsoft's claims of security are just that: Claims. They will never release truly trustable software.
Well, as you can see, the file trading networks aren't all bad-news to the poor artists, like the RIAA would have you believe. But then, some people are aware of the real reason that the RIAA wants to kill filesharing, and it's not piracy.
What? Not piracy? Then why in the world would they want to kill a system that is so beneficial to them?
Because of a problem that they consider bigger than piracy: The growing number of independant artists, many of whom are becoming increasingly popular. Yes, that's right folks. The RIAA doesn't want to protect its poor artists from the piracy that is putting them in the poorhouse. On the contrary, the RIAA is the one putting its poor artists in the poorhouse. No, no, no, folks. The RIAA is doing this to take business away from the artists that the RIAA is incapable of putting in the poorhouse, because it is incapable of stealing their money, because they didn't sign their soul over to the RIAA.
That, my friends, is why the RIAA wants to kill filesharing.
Slashdot Mirror
Survey Questions
(1) Name of your government agency:
(2) Number of computers installed:
(3)Do any of your computers run Windows and/or other software from Microsoft?
Scoring: Use the following chart to score your agency's computer security:
Do NOT use Microsoft products: A.
Use Microsoft products: F.
Thank you for taking the time to fill out this survey.
Head of Automatic Transmission Fluid to what?!??!? Did I miss something?
Kind of like the way kids are taught to spy on their parents and report thoughtcrime if they see anything even remotely out of the ordinary.
Instead of dragging this on over a couple hundred years, why don't we all just join the Communist party today and get it over with?
After investing billions of dollars into researching the theft of its intellectual property, SCO produces the following source code in court:
}
According to The SCO Group's respectable CEO, Mr. Darl McBride, one million of the above lines were found in various source code files pertaining to Microsoft Windows XP, proving that the Linux community did, in fact, steal one million lines of valuable SCO intellectual property.
Mr. McBride had this to say about his discovery:
(Darl could not finish commenting because the orderlies carried him back to his padded room at this point.)This is what worries me about SCO: That their army of lawyers will wreak terrible legal havoc, not because SCO was right, or because SCO suffered damages--I strongly believe that neither of these is the case. Their army of lawyers will pull off Bill Gates style, "I don't understand your question," when the question is, "Does X concern you?" They'll pull off Bill Clinton style, "That depends on what 'is' means." They'll find loopholes and language in the law that nobody ever thought was there, with newly made-up implications that no legislator intended or thought would occur, to cause as much damage as possible to the Linux community and the free software community in general.
The longer I think about this, the more apparent it becomes to me that they do not want to profit from litigation. It's like the old story of people who are seated at both sides of a long table covered with the most wonderful foods in the world. The only problem is that the silverware is a yard long, and nobody's arm is long enough to fit their spoon or fork into their mouth. So somebody comes up with the idea that everyone should feed the person seated across from him. That way, everybody gets to eat. But Darl says, "What?! I will feed somebody else?! NO WAY! Sure, it means I won't eat but he won't eat either!!" That, I strongly believe, is the nature of Darl McBride, and the new SCO.
They do not want to profit. They do not want to rectify damages (which I strongly believe never occurred). They do not want to protect their copyrights (which I strongly believe were never violated). They are focused on one solitary goal, and that is to destroy (or damage, to the greatest extent possible) Linux.
Here is my favorite quote from that article:
My comments on that quote: I'd be willing to bet that whoever challenged Darl to a fight would have actually done it, but Darl, upon finding out that he was about to get his ass kicked, chickened out.What do you think?
(1) These were some of the words off the magazine's cover. The entire title is: "Is SCO Group's Darl McBride THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN in the technology industry? With a lawsuit imminent, Linux users are about to find out.
--
Reference: "You May Be Next" by John Foley, InformationWeek, Nov 24. 2003, pp 20-22.
$CO sux0rz!! Linux r00lz!!
I have many old(er) computers around here. My fastest is a Pentium III laptop, and my slowest is an old Pentium 133 box. Basically, whenever I got to the point where I needed an upgrade, I just got more RAM. Cutting down on swapping has brought me significantly greater performance improvements than having a "faster" processor.
Further, I am sick and tired of the market hype that surrounds clock speeds. It's not the processor, but the software that needs to be made more efficient. And because many programs spend a lot of time processing graphics and GUI stuff, I think that making video boards "smarter" by adding GUI-specific processing features would bring a significantly greater performance improvement, by offloading crap from the main processor, than speeding up the main processor.
All of that said, it doesn't surprise me that an old processor is "faster" than a newer one. There are hundreds of variables affecting their respective performances, the biggest one being the software used to test them. In most cases, I think it's like comparing apples to oranges.
Personal computers have gotten so fast and powerful in the past couple of years that I think what's under the hood is totally irrelevant to 90% of the users. The other 10% have specific needs because of high-end applications or something.
1. Make False Claims
2. Litigate.
3. Profit!!!
SCO CEO Darl McBride will head the organization, bringing with him years of experience in..... oh, never mind.
AOL's "1. Mail computers 2. ??? 3. Profit!!!" plan is as follows:
Savvy computer users will figure out that erasing the hard drive and installing their own OS removes the 1045 hour time limit, and removing the TNT from inside the computer case completely eliminates the possibility of the computer blowing up.
Then, in an RIAA-like effort, AOL will sue hundreds of thousands of individuals for illegally using their computers, which constitute valuable intellectual property. They will ignore the fact that by law, when they send something in the mail, it becomes the property of the recipient. It will take a long time for this to get to the courts, in order for the courts to throw it out, and in the meantime, many frightened teenagers will settle with AOL for amounts greatly exceeding the market value of the computers.
Clean profits for AOL.
Die, SCO, die!!!
Also, if conspiracy is proven, SCO, and its board, will face criminal, as well as civil penalties.
This is what I hope happens. They deserve to face all the criminal and civil penalties in the world, because what they have done is criminal. It would be really good, also, as it would restore faith in free software, especially Linux itself, and take faith away from any other vultures like SCO who think they can try something like this. I will be extremely happy if Darl McBride is shown on the evening news in handcuffs, being escorted to a police car, followed by a commercial for SuSE Linux or KDE or vi or something.
In other news, George Orwell's novel 1984 was banned because its contents were not politically correct. Orwell's use of the name Big Brother is not gender neutral and offends some obese people. Orwell's book is being recalled, and a court order has been issued to George Orwell to change the name to Thin Bisexual Sister.
Hard drive manufacturers shouldn't be so NIGGARDLY in supplying jumpers, and should incur the expense of shipping color-coded jumpers.
I think several things need to happen here:
First, I encourage anyone and everyone to write to all the hard disk manufacturers you can think of, and strongly discourage them from changing this naming convention. Politely explain that the entire world should not change because of one person's lack of familiarity with the master/slave relationship of hard drives. (This terminology is actually used in other fields besides hard drives, to denote any mechanism or device in which this relationship of control is found.)
Second, if you've gone as far as doing that, you should consider writing to the county of Los Angeles to let them know how ridiculous and silly their request is.
I do not usually interfere in things like this, or ask anybody to do so, but I strongly believe that this is a frightening trend that is growing in too many areas. For example, a book called "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn" by Diane Ravitch gives example after example of things that school textbooks cannot say because they are politically incorrect. If you read this book, you'll eventually ask yourself, "Well, what exactly can you talk about?" That's the problem. If the entire world needs to change each time one person (or a small group of people) is offended by some terminology, then we will eventually live in George Orwell's nightmare.
As other Slashcrackers have noted, soon you won't be able to call a connector male or female, because somebody with an as-yet unknown gender (like an alleged child molester named MICHAEL JACKSON, though it's unlikely you've heard of him) will be offended at that.
*whoosh*
Hear that? It's the sound of your credibility flying right out the window.
Hmmm... The anti-God movement has gotten bigger than I thought.
- And pigs should really fly.
Perhaps, then, you suggest that people should not make choices, and furthermore that they should not be responsible for their own actions. And I suppose that the government should pay for it?
Sounds like a plan. But do it somewhere else, not in my country.
It is inappropriate to use the apostrophe in "communitys." It should, instead, be spelled, "communities." No apostrophe.
To make a long story short, this document is an "Emperor's New Clothes"-style piece of PHB-speak/business-speak/market-speak/PR-speak that nobody really understands, but every business IT strategist that reads it will pretend that its meaning is very profound, like the emperor pretends to see his nonexistant clothes, to avoid appearing stupid to colleagues.
Microsoft. Where do you want to go today?
People should make choices and be responsible for those choices. Computers should NOT make choices in peoples' places.
Wal-Mart is the Microsoft of stores. Wal-Mart is crushing American companies. They demand lower prices, forcing American companies to outsource overseas, causing losses of American jobs. If they cannot or will not cut the prices to levels that require slave labor, Wal-Mart goes to overseas companies. The result? Americans who shop at Wal-Mart are shopping themselves out of a job.
You could also write emails to it about your girlfriend problems (by writing something like, "my girlfriend is mad at me"), and it'll send back a list, compiled for your particular situation, of things to say and do, down to the finest detail, designed to appeal to all levels of the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind of the female in question.
How does it work? All matter and energy in the universe comes in the form of waves at various frequencies and whatnot. The vibration of these waves is actually what produces everything we know. Even the fabric of space is part of this cosmic symphony. Every vibration has an effect on everything around it. So all they have to do is make up a piece of hardware, which I'll describe presently, and some drivers to support it under Linux. The hardware will include two sensors. In one, there's a single atom of hydrogen. Its vibrations are measured. The other is a gravitational sensor that senses where all the stars are in the universe. The information from these sensors goes into a simple mathematical formula that figures out exactly what is going on everywhere in the universe at any given moment in the past, present, or future. That information is then indexed like a lookup table to find the exact problem you're talking about in your email to the thing, and, knowing that this server will produce the correct answer, all it has to do is look into its own future to see whta that answer is. Essentially, the information comes from nowhere. Building the two sensors and the mathematical formula I described is elementary and left as an exercise for the reader.
Artificial Intelligence. It's what's for dinner.
You seem to forget one thing about the duel: Nobody forces you to accept a challenge to a duel if you are challenged. Note, also, that it is still illegal to use violence without the consent of the opposing party. For the purposes of freedom, however, it should be allowed for two consenting people to engage in a duel if that will help them to reconcile their differences of opinion on some matter.
On the other hand, free software and/or open source software can be and is maintained by people all around the world. When there is an important problem, it is fixed very quickly. Most important of all from a security perspective, everybody can examine the inner workings of the software they use to make sure it meets their security standard.
What does this mean for Microsoft? Simply that they will continue to lose more and more installations around the world, while Linux, BSD, other OSs, and all the free and commercial software surrounding them take over.
Microsoft's claims of security are just that: Claims. They will never release truly trustable software.
What? Not piracy? Then why in the world would they want to kill a system that is so beneficial to them?
Because of a problem that they consider bigger than piracy: The growing number of independant artists, many of whom are becoming increasingly popular. Yes, that's right folks. The RIAA doesn't want to protect its poor artists from the piracy that is putting them in the poorhouse. On the contrary, the RIAA is the one putting its poor artists in the poorhouse. No, no, no, folks. The RIAA is doing this to take business away from the artists that the RIAA is incapable of putting in the poorhouse, because it is incapable of stealing their money, because they didn't sign their soul over to the RIAA.
That, my friends, is why the RIAA wants to kill filesharing.